1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to telecommunications and, in particular, to voice identification. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to identifying current parties to a call to an incoming calling party.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telephone service has created communication channels worldwide, and those channels continue to expand with the advent of cellular and other wireless services. A person can simply take a telephone off-hook and dial a destination number or press a send button and be connected to a telephone line around the world.
Today, the public switching telephone network (PSTN), wireless networks, and private networks telephone services are based on the identification of the wireless telephone or wireline that a calling party uses. A service, often referred to as Acaller ID@, provides the party receiving a call with the line number and name of the subscriber of the line number from which the call originates.
One limitation of caller ID is that the identity of the party actually making the call is not received, just the name of the line subscriber. For example, in a private network, if AJoe Smith@ is making a call from ATom Arnold""s office line@ only the extension for ATom Arnold""s office line@ and an identifier for ATom Arnold@ are transferred to the called party.
Another limitation of caller ID is that the identity of the party answering the call is not returned to the party making the call. For example, in a PSTN, a single line number may be answered by multiple parties, and at multiple telephone devices, where the caller ID does not identity the party answering the call.
A further limitation of caller ID is that a line number and line subscriber name provide a limited context for a call. For example, in a wireless network, where ATom Jenkins@ calls a friend""s wireless number, ATom Jenkins@ does not receive any information about whether the call is wireless, how the call is being billed, and whether the wireless number is a business or personal number.
Services such as call waiting and call messaging allow a line subscriber to select options for directing a call, particularly where that call is incoming during a current call. For example, call waiting provides an alert to a line party that another caller is requesting to speak with that line party. The line party may select to switch the call to the requesting caller or the call may be directed to a call messaging service after a particular period of time. In addition, the line party may receive the caller ID of the requesting caller, such that the line party may determine whether it is necessary to switch to the requesting caller.
However, while caller ID is provided to a line party, a requesting party does not receive any indication of what type of call the requesting party may be interrupting or a reason that the requesting party was transferred to voice mail. Further, while providing the caller ID of the parties to a call to a requesting party may provide an indication of the line numbers involved in a call, only receiving line numbers provides a limited context. Moreover, it would not be advantageous to provide information about the parties to a call to every requesting party.
Therefore, in view of the foregoing, it would be advantageous to provide a method, system, and program for only providing the identities of parties to a current call to an incoming calling party, where the identity of the incoming party is on a preferred list of incoming calling parties allowed to receive current call information. Further, it would be advantageous to determine a context of a call and to determine current call information provided to an authorized incoming calling party according to the call context.
In view of the foregoing, it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved telecommunications system.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method, system and program for improved voice identification.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a method, system and program for identifying current parties to a call to an incoming calling party.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a context for a current call is identified, wherein the context comprises at least an identity of a caller and an identity of a callee to the current call. An identifier for an incoming calling party to the current call is identified. The context is filtered according to the identifier for the incoming calling party. Output of the filtered context to the incoming calling party is controlled.
According to another aspect of the present invention, an incoming call request is detected from an incoming calling party to a party from among a caller and callee to a current call. A context for the call in view of the incoming calling party is determined. The context for the call is distributed to the caller and to the callee.
A trusted telephone network preferably processes the call and initiates a context inference service to identify the context of a call. The context inference service may be initiated locally within the trusted telephone network or at a server located outside the trusted telephone network, with additional security applied for the communication channel.
All objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent in the following detailed written description.